Keyword: georgewill

WASHINGTON — Conservatives’ next disappointment will at least be a validation. The coming reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank will confirm their warnings about the difficulty of prying the government’s tentacles off what should be society’s private sphere. The bank, which exists to allocate credit by criteria other than the market’s preference for efficiency, mirrors the market-distorting policies of foreign governments. These policies favor those countries’ exports that compete with America’s. Much of what the bank does is supposedly to “level the playing field.” When Fred P. Hochberg, the bank’s chairman and president, defends it, an old joke comes to mind:...

Will’s Take: There Is a ‘Culture Clash’ Between the Obama Administration and Israel February 25, 2015 George Will said he thinks the disagreement between the Obama administration and Israel is representative of a personal dispute between President Obama and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We have a community organizer dealing with a commando; they’re not on the same wavelength,” Will said on Wednesday’s Special Report.

<p>“We’re here today because we all understand that in dealing with violent extremism, that we need answers that go beyond a military answer. We need answers that go beyond force.”</p>
<p>WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s semantic somersaults to avoid attaching the adjective “Islamic” to the noun “extremism” are as indicative as they are entertaining. Progressives who believe that dialogues, conversations, engagements, conferences and summits are keys to pacifying the world have a peculiar solemnity about using certain words that are potentially insensitive. This mentality is perhaps especially acute in digitally drenched people who believe that Twitter and other social media have the power to tame turbulent reality.</p>

Although he is always preternaturally placid, Mike Pence today exemplifies a Republican conundrum. Sitting recently 24 blocks from Capitol Hill, where he served six terms as a congressman, and eight blocks from the White House, which some Republicans hope he craves, Pence, now in his third year as Indiana’s governor, discussed two issues, Common Core and Medicaid expansion, that illustrate the following: Today’s president, whose prior governmental experience was meager and entirely legislative, probably has strengthened voters’ normal preference for actual executives — governors rather than legislators — as chief executives. Governors actually govern, which means continually making choices and...

The Justice Department has been, to say no more, unhelpful regarding attempts to fully investigate and properly punish the politicization and corruption of the Internal Revenue Service. Given the department’s seeming complicity in the coverup, would it not be appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the IRS practice of suppressing the political activity of conservative groups? Civil forfeiture — the seizure of property suspected of being produced by, or involved with, crime — has become a lucrative business for lawless law enforcement. Civil forfeiture treats citizens worse than criminals, seizing the property of people neither convicted of nor...

Common Core and the Bill Gates Foundation and George WillYou know it is awful when cautious and moderate conservative George Will is against you because Common Core is just another Federal power grab. My reasons for being against Common Core are: The Federal Department of Education is highly affirmative action as in employment preferences being given to liberals, lefties, militant women, gays, blacks, minorities/ I don't like it when these fanatics are running the show.The various States are always more fair on such hiring practicesThe Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is really the Melinda Gates Foundation. She calls the shotsShe...

One day after saying Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz had no idea “what they were trying to accomplish,” syndicated columnist George Will said Monday on “Special Report” the pair have two “exceedingly strange careers underway.” Will told Fox News’ Doug McKelway that Cruz is “indifferent” to politics being a “team sport,” adding further that there hasn’t been “a more peculiar career” in the Senate than the one Cruz is currently enjoying. The conservative columnist also said while Democrats are “bemused” by his antics, he is “loathed” within the GOP caucus, while also telling McKelway if Cruz doesn’t get the GOP...

In the mid-1990s, when the collapse of the Mexican economy produced a wave of illegal immigration to Arizona, I did volunteer work at a Phoenix school that was struggling to meet the needs of a few hundred Mexican children who spoke only Spanish. Even as I sought to help ease the transition for both sides, I thought it would be better for everyone if the influx subsided. That explains my contradictory reactions of appreciation for and disagreement with George Will' s open-arms pronouncement on "Fox New Sunday" regarding Central Americans streaming across the Mexican border into Texas. It is burning...

George Will isn’t backing down, even as critics are “calling for [his] head.” Will’s Washington Post column on sexual assault stirred up a great deal of controversy, as he acknowledged in an interview with C-SPAN published Friday. “Today, for some reason … indignation is the default position of certain people in civic discourse,” he said. “They go from a standing start to fury in about 30 seconds.” The internet has “erased the barriers of entry to public discourse,” Will said, which is good because more people can be involved in conversations, but it’s bad because a lot of those people...

St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Page Editor Tony Messenger writes that readers — both liberal and conservative ones — have lobbied the paper to change its lineup of conservative columnists. But apparently a bit of a push was necessary. That came from a recent controversial piece by Washington Post columnist George Will — the one about the “supposed campus epidemic of rape” and the way in which “victimhood” serves as a “coveted status that confers privileges.”

(RNN) – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch axed conservative thinker George Will's syndicated column Wednesday. Editor Tony Messenger apologized to his readers. He stated the change had been considered for months, but "a column published June 5, in which Mr. Will suggested that sexual assault victims on college campuses enjoy a privileged status, made the decision easier. "The column was offensive and inaccurate; we apologize for publishing it," Messenger said. The newspaper announced Will's column would be replaced by Michael Gerson, "former speechwriter and top aide to President George W. Bush." In Will's column, Colleges become the victims of progressivism, he...

Last week, George Will wrote a column about how progressive politics have fomented "rape culture" on college campuses. The column was not well received by some, or even, as a great many of the histrionic responses would indicate, well understood. I received the following press release yesterday, headlined: "87,000 Call on The Washington Post to Address Sexism, Fire George Will." A group called UltraViolet was touting the success of an online petition they'd whipped up over the controversy. From the release:

When pundits on ABC's "This Week" Sunday discussed recent news that the Supreme Court would take up two major gay marriage cases -- challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Prop 8 -- conservative commentator George Will issued a blunt characterization of same-sex marriage's opponents. There is something like an emerging consensus. Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying. It’s old people. According to a Politico poll out Sunday, Will is right in saying that older Americans are less likely to support gay marriage. The poll said that while 63 percent of 18 to...

Time's Joe Klein on Sunday found out what it's like to actually have to debate conservatives rather than the liberal media members he normally appears with on political talk shows. When he uttered the typical left-wing line on ABC's This Week about the need for more gun control in the wake of Friday's movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado, Klein got a much-needed education from George Will and the Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin (video follows with transcript and commentary): George Will and Jennifer Rubin Demolish Time's Joe Klein on Gun Control Laws GEORGE WILL: The killer in Aurora, Colorado, was...

A few millennia from now, when archaeologists from an ascendant Brazil or Turkey or wherever sift the shards of American civilization and find the ruins of the Big House in Ann Arbor, Mich., they will wonder why a 109,901-seat entertainment venue was attached to an institution of higher education. Today, the accelerating preposterousness of big-time college football is again provoking furrowed brows and pursed lips. But there probably were few of either among the 20 million who Saturday night watched Alabama's student-athletes play those of LSU. These teams' head coaches' salaries are $4.6 million and $3.75 million, respectively, and their...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yesterday on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, George Will -- this was during the roundtable discussion, George Will discussing Mitt Romney. WILL: It has a lot to do with Romney. He is rising as more and more Republicans come to the conclusion that the Republican Party has found its Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor running on competence, not ideology. RUSH: Did you hear that? George Will characterizing Mitt Romney as the Republican Party's Michael Dukakis. Michael Dukakis, a Democrat loser running for office in 1988, one of the most famous things that Dukakis did was he...

WASHINGTON -- Listening to political talk requires a third ear that hears what is not said. Today's near silence about crime probably is evidence of social improvement. For many reasons, including better policing and more incarceration, Americans feel, and are, safer. The New York Times has not recently repeated such amusing headlines as "Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" (1997), "Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops" (1998), "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction" (2000) and "More Inmates, Despite Slight Drop in Crime" (2003). If crime revives as an issue, it will be through liberal complaints...

Two Democratic presidential candidates with national campaign experience are stumbling. A Republican candidate who has run only municipal campaigns is confounding expectations, calling into question some assumptions about Republican voters. Regarding the Republican race, for many months commentators have said that when the Republican base learns the facts about Rudy Giuliani's personal life (an annulled first marriage, a messy divorce, then a third marriage) and views on social issues (for abortion rights, gay rights and gun control, in each case with limits), support for him will evaporate. But such commentary is becoming self-refuting. The insistent reiteration of it during Giuliani's...

This may be the most nation-shaping election since 1932, not only — or even primarily — because of the parties' foreign policy differences. Those differences, about sovereignty, multilateralism, preemptive war and nation-building, concern vital fundamentals. But 2004 may secure the ascendancy of one of two radically different ideas of the proper role of government and the individual's proper relationship to it. This will be the first election since candidate George W. Bush made explicit in 2000 what had become implicit in conservatives' behavior. As recently as the 1994 congressional elections, Republicans had triumphed by preaching small-government conservatism, vowing to abolish...

EAGER TO IMPROVE their town’s moral tone, Los Angeles city councilors are considering an ordinance to improve decorum at strip clubs: No lap dances — dancers are required to remain six feet from customers — no direct tipping, no private VIP rooms in clubs with full nudity. Advocates of the ordinance say such goings-on lead to prostitution. Opponents of the ordinance, including the dancers, deny that prostitution flourishes at the clubs. And they call the ordinance an unconstitutional abridgement of free artistic expression. But a federal appeals court upheld a law in Washington state requiring dancers to stay 10...

Will, who once taught political philosophy at Michigan State, said he is “still a Spartan who takes equal pleasure from good MSU football seasons and dismal ones in Ann Arbor,” referring to the University of Michigan. Connie Rzemien, whose daughter, Katie, was among those graduating, told The Detroit News she thought Will was not the right choice. “I believe it is contradictory to what they are doing here to have somebody with such an insensitive view of rape to speak today,” she said. “I think it’s insulting to young women.” The U.S. Education Department this year revealed a list of...

The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities. This administration aggressively hawked the fiction that the Benghazi attack was just an excessively boisterous movie review. Now we are told that a few wayward souls in Cincinnati, with nary a trace of political purpose, targeted for harassment political groups with “tea party” and “patriot”...

This story begins almost four months ago, when Washington Post columnist George Will challenged the Obama administrationâ€™s attempts to use debunked data to push a narrative of an epidemic of sexual assaults on American college campuses. Will also criticized the expansion of the term â€śsexual assaultâ€ť to a nearly meaningless definition, and the demand by the White House for colleges to use a minimal standard of evidence to â€śconvictâ€ť the accused. For being one of the first to call foul on the Department of Educationâ€™s efforts, Will earned the ire of progressives and activists, and one newspaper stopped carrying...

-SNIP_Of the five Senate contests in purple states — Iowa, Virginia, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Colorado — this is currently the closest: The Real Clear Politics average of polls shows a tie (Ernst ahead by 0.2 percentage points as of Friday). Which should make Republicans anxious as they try to take control of the Senate and as they contemplate the 2016 presidential landscape. Although Iowa has voted Democratic in six of the last seven presidential elections, the Ernst-Braley contest should not be this close. Only 38 percent of Iowans approve of Barack Obama’s performance. Braley, a past president of an...

he Islamic State is a nasty problem that can be remedied if its neighbors, assisted by the United States, decide to do so. Vladimir Putin’s fascist revival is a crisis that tests the West’s capacity to decide. Putin’s serial amputations of portions of Ukraine, which began with his fait accompli in Crimea, will proceed, and succeed, until his appetite is satiated. Then the real danger will begin. Suppose Ukraine is merely his overture for the destruction of NATO, the nemesis of his Soviet memory. Then what might be his version of the Gleiwitz radio-station episode 75 years ago?

George Will gave a surprisingly isolationist view on Fox News Sunday this morning when he said that if Iraq’s neighbors can’t take out ISIS with all their military might, then we shouldn’t either. Watch below: CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO...

As per its common dictionary definition, theft is described as “..the taking of another person’s property without that person’s permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it.” To commit a theft a person or entity must act in a state of mens rea or guilty mind and with full intent to deprive the victim of property rightfully belonging to him or her. For thousands of years those in power have taken what does not belong to them and given it to others with no claim to such property in order to boost their own ego...

In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, conservative columnist George Will had some harsh words for those who insist that the waves of migrant children crossing the border from non-contiguous nations in search of asylum. “We ought to say to these children, ‘Welcome to American, you’re going to go to school and get a job and become Americans,’” Will insisted. He seemed to suggest that those who advocate for the deportation of South and Central American minors underestimate America’s power to assimilate foreign-born populations. “We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county,” he added. The...

On Fox News Sunday, Republican writer George Will said that America should let all of the illegal immigrant juveniles from Central America remain and ensure they are allowed to "go to school and get a job." "My view is that we have to say to these children, 'Welcome to America. You're going to go to school and get a job and become Americans,'" Will declared. "We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous." Will was asked to respond to Republicans...

What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his...

MSNBC somehow hit another new low all over again. Filling in as host on The Ed Show, Michael Eric Dyson accused George Will of being a "rapist" and "re-raping" women by writing his opinion in the Washington Post. No. Seriously. Mr. Will stated that colleges have become a haven of progressivism, where so-called "vicimizations" are "ubiquitous." Mr. Will writes that empty buzzwords like "triggers" and "micro-aggressions" are now thrown around colleges to the point of ubiquity. The passage that Mr. Dyson took offense to was one in which Mr. Will stated that, at times, "sexual assault" accusations that are put...

If our government has any obligation to fulfill its many promises on health care, it should be first and foremost to the men and women who served in our armed forces. But the scandal over hidden waiting lists at a growing number of veterans’ hospitals (seven so far) — wherein dozens of veterans died while waiting months for vital treatment, and the VA covered up the lengthy wait times — should make everyone wonder whether we can place our trust in a government-managed health-care system. The Dayton Daily News reported on Sunday that its investigation of a database of...

If the president wants to witness a refutation of his assertion that the survival of the Affordable Care Act is assured, come Thursday he should stroll the 13 blocks from his office to the nation’s second-most important court, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. There he can hear an argument involving yet another constitutional provision that evidently has escaped his notice. It is the origination clause, which says: “All bills for raising reveornue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.” The ACA passed the Senate on a...

On Fox News Sunday, George Will was asked about the significance of the Benghazi memo. Specifically, host (Chris) Wallace asked about remarks by Charles Krauthammer comparing the discovery of the Rhodes email to discovery of the Nixon tapes. […] “Rather less (significant) than the Watergate tapes, which showed a President at the heart of a crime wave suborning perjury and raising hush money and all the rest. …”

Legendary conservative columnist George Will says he is an atheist. […] “I’m an amiable, low voltage atheist,” Will explained. “I deeply respect religions and religious people. The great religions reflect something constant and noble in the human character, defensible and admirable yearnings.” “I am just not persuaded. That’s all,” he added. …

Two years ago, when the Supreme Court declared Obamacare's penalty to be a tax, it doomed the healthcare reform act as an "unconstitutional violation of the origination clause," columnist George Will says. This Thursday, the Washington, D.C., Court of Appeals, the nation's second-most important court, will hear arguments on whether the Affordable Care Act adheres to the Constitution's "origination clause," which declare that "all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills," Will writes in his column in The Washington Post Saturday. Will points...

In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution is “basically about” one word — “democracy” — that appears in neither that document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America’s way of allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine that power in order to “secure the blessings of” that which simultaneously justifies and limits democratic government — natural liberty. The fundamental division in U.S. politics is between those who take their bearings from the individual’s right to a capacious, indeed indefinite, realm of freedom, and those whose fundamental value is the right of...

Tomorrow is Tax Day, and millions of Americans â€” myself included â€” will see a large drain from our bank accounts to satisfy our obligations to Uncle Sam. So far, though, we have not seen Uncle Sam fulfill his obligation to drain the apparent political corruption at the IRS, even with two Congressional investigations into the targeting of the administrationâ€™s critics in the tax-exempt department under Lois Lerner. Barack Obama claims that there isnâ€™t â€śa smidgen of corruptionâ€ť at the IRS, but the Washington Postâ€™s Bob Woodward scoffed at that defense on yesterdayâ€™s Fox News Sunday. Â“ThereÂ’s obviously something here,Â”...

In an interview with TheBlaze in connection with the release of his new book, “A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred,” we spoke with columnist and author George Will on all things baseball and his unified theory of beer, and then moved on to the arguably more important topic of the state of the union, touching on everything from the American founding, Will’s affinity for the Tea Party, to 2016, to immigration. Among other explosive comments, Will told us that he is “quite confident that we’re going to rebel against this abusive government…sooner or...

On "Fox News Sunday," Washington Post columnist George Will criticized Attorney General Eric Holder who claim racism is behind his political adversaries' attacks: “Liberalism has a kind of Tourette Syndrome these days," Will said. "It's constantly saying the words racism and racist. There’s an old saying, 'If you have the law on your side, argue the law. If you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table.' This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s, except Obamacare, and the...

"Andre Dawson," Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully once said, "has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. Aren't we all?" Yes, so use some of your remaining time constructively by identifying the player or players who: (1) Won three batting titles by at least 44 points (two players)...

The Earth hasn’t warmed in 17 years. The Arctic ice cap haven’t melted by 2013 as Al Gore suggested in 2007. Instead like the Antarctic ice cap it has grown. Nearly every computer model created by global warming scientists has turned out to be a massive exaggeration if not outright false. Despite all of this the UN has doubled down on their extremist global warming/climate change theories. Meanwhile Adam Weinstein of Gawker wants to imprison “climate change deniers.” Rather than have a spirited scientific debate, Weinstein wants the matter declared settled science. As George Will mused several months back, when...

Many “Downton Abbey” watchers are nostalgia gluttons who grieved when Lord Grantham lost his fortune in Canadian railroad shares. There are, however, a discerning few whose admirable American sensibilities caused them to rejoice at Grantham’s loss: “Now perhaps this amiable but dilettantish toff will get off his duff and get a job.” This drama’s verisimilitude extends to emphasizing that his lordship had a fortune to squander only because he married an American heiress. By battening on what they disdained, this republic’s commercial culture, many British aristocrats could live beyond their inherited means — actual work being, of course, unthinkable.

by John Urban | Top Right NewsIt was a remarkable -- and disturbing -- catch. Not fruit-pickers. Not landscapers. Not roofers or housekeepers. Not "hard-working immigrants" performing "an entrepreneurial act" by crossing the border, as elitist tool George Will described illegal aliens to Laura Ingraham this past Sunday. Not quite. In just three days last month, Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector recently re-arrested more than a dozen convicted felons, including two MS-13 gang members, most of whom were not supposed to be in the United States, officials said. A majority of the felons were sex offenders convicted of...

Conservative commentators Laura Ingraham and George Will can usually be counted on to agree on most issues, but on “Fox News Sunday,” the two sparred over immigration reform, an issue threatening to rip apart the uneasy alliance between the traditional and libertarian wings of the Republican Party. Fox host Chris Wallace began the discussion — which also included AP reporter Julie Pace and liberal commentator Juan Williams — by noting that Republican leadership seems to be rethinking the wisdom of partnering with President Obama on comprehensive immigration reform. Many conservative bulwarks — including the Wall Street Journal — argued that...

Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham battled the rest of the Fox News Sunday panel over immigration, arguing that immigration reform and current enforcement of immigration laws were weakening the American workforce, even as her fellow panelists countered that reform would bolster the economy. “I think what we’re seeing here is a split inside the Republican Party between two staunch conservatives,” host Chris Wallace said, going on to ply Ingraham with a Wall Street Journal editorial that called flinching on reform “de facto amnesty.” “As far as I can tell, the Wall Street Journal is on the side of Nancy Pelosi,...

Someone you probably are not familiar with has filed a suit you probably have not heard about concerning a four-word phrase you should know about. The suit could blow to smithereens something everyone has heard altogether too much about, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (hereafter, ACA). Scott Pruitt and some kindred spirits might accelerate the ACA’s collapse by blocking another of the Obama administration’s lawless uses of the Internal Revenue Service. Pruitt was elected Oklahoma’s attorney general by promising to defend states’ prerogatives against federal encroachment, and today he and some properly litigious people elsewhere are defending a...